Friday, September 26, 2014

Emergent Gurus: Carl Medearis, Part 1

From the August 2011 E-Block.***

I was not expecting to be doing another entry in
the Emergent Guris series for this issue, but a reader asked us to have
a look at a recent book, Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Non-Evangelism
(SOJ) by Carl Medearis, and I was quite frankly so appalled by what I
read in just the first few pages that I decided an extended critique was
warranted.

SOJ, to be blunt, represents in summary that which is worst in
emergent Christianity -- a tragic mix of passive-aggressive arrogance
and ignorance posing itself as winsome wisdom while undermining the very
foundations of what it professes to believe in. For this reason, our
critique will proceed by pages -- something I normally reserve only for
the worst offenders in any scenario -- and shall extended over more
than one issue.

19 -- Medearis' thematic expression here is that what he calls an
"us versus them" model of Christianity which "misses the point." It
does? Really? Then one must wonder how Jesus "missed the point" in
confronting Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians; and how Paul, John,
and Jude "missed the point" lambasting ideological foes of Christianity.
In reality, "us versus them" quite accurately expresses the
ingroup-outgroup models of behavior found in the social world of the
Bible, and the NT is salted with examples of this model as particulars
demanded it. Jesus' own inclination to use parables in teaching
"outgroup" members in itself implies an "us" in contrast to "them".
Medearis' denunciation of this model is a fantasy of modernist tolerance
and accommodation.

22-3 -- Typical of emergents, Medearis makes far too much of his
own cleverness in supposing he discovered something. He poses a question
asking the reader to define what the gospel is, and after naming various
theological components such as eternal life and justification by faith,
smirkingly observes that something is missing from the list: Jesus.

I for one find it unlikely that anyone (despite Medearis'
anecdotes) forgot that Jesus had something to do with the gospel. It is
far more likely that Medearis is making an attempt at semantic sleight
of hand by confusing categories: Jesus is a person, and the gospel is
the message he proclaimed; to say Jesus "IS" the gospel is like saying
Barack Obama is the United States of America. From a category
perspective, Medearis' question should have been, "Who is at the
heart of the gospel?" This is a quite pertinent example of emergents
wrapped up in their own cleverness thinking they have proved some sort
of point, when they have actually arrived at that point by way of
semantic gerrymandering.

25 --As another example of semantic sleight of hand, Medearis
says with regret that he tried too often to "win allies to my point of
view rather than pointing to Jesus." When Mederais points to Jesus, is
he not thereby implicity expressing his point of view that Jesus is
someone worthy of being pointed to? Emergents frequently engage, I find,
an epistemic fantasy in which they suppose that simply because they are
not engaging in formal, structured argument, they are not trying to win
people to a point of view.

26 -- In a related vein, emergents (who are not alone in this
aspect) are fond of posing "Jesus" in opposition to everything else
thus: "There is a place for doctrines and dogma and science and history
and apologetics, but these things are not Jesus -- they are humanly
manufactured attempts to make people think having the right ideas is the
same thing as loving and following Jesus."

What escapes Medearis here is that without that doctrine, that
history, that apologetics, there is no reason to distinguish his "Jesus"
from the Jesus who makes Mormon bosoms burn, or from the Jesus who is
merely an imaginary friend as the atheists say he is, or the Jesus who
is cast as a Hindu avatar who went to India at age 13. The illusion
emergents have here is that if they wave "loving and following Jesus"
around with a pious flourish, they have dispensed with any priority
towards a faith that has epistemic grounding.

Like it or not, to get to the point where one follows and loves Jesus, one must first contemplate ideas that give way to a decision to follow and love Jesus. Thus even Medearis must have had a "right idea" to get where he is now.

30 -- Again exemplifying tragic epistemology, Medearis tells a
story of four substantially failed ministry attempts of his, followed by
a fifth that was successful: He was sent to do prison ministry, and
decided he would "simply [tell] them about Jesus." Since his prison
ministry ended up more successful, Medearis jumps to the conclusion that
it was "just" telling them about Jesus that caused the success.

Having worked in prisons, I rather doubt it was that trite. More
likely, it was the simplicity of the message per se that was most
helpful, as opposed to it being "just" about Jesus. But even if that
were the case, it is ridiculous to extrapolate so broadly from a single
(or even a handful) of random personal experiences, in particular and
specific settings, to "this is how it always ought to be to done with
everyone."

36 -- for reasons I cannot fathom, it seems that all emergents
make the same mistake of thinking Simon the Zealot was part of the
militant Zealots group of the later first century. it would be well here
to revisit what I wrote of this some years ago:
Here, what "the more credible portions of the Gospels" are is not
delineated, but seems to indicate, "those that agree with the point of
view of James Still" - and indeed, those who hold to this absurdly
outdated theory of Jesus-as-Zealot must inevitably resort to parsing the
NT at will in order to maintain their viewpoint. It will not be our
purpose here to take a complete look at these theories; rather, we
recommend that the reader consult Hengel's magisterial work on the
subject [Heng.Z], and an earlier, much smaller work [Heng.JRev], which
will make it quite clear that there could have been no significant
correspondence between Jesus and the Zealot movement. (See especially
pp. 297-8 of the former, where Hengel notes seven major divergences
between Jesus and the Zealot movement.)

...Bruce Winter in After Paul Left Corinth [38] notes that the
word "zealot" was applied to a disciple of a teacher, and had been used
for a long time in the academy to describe the exclusive loyalty that
was expected of a student. It may be no surprise that Luke alone, a
Gentile writer, uses the term for Simon
This is not merely a trivial point, for Medearis used the presence of
Simon as a supposed member of the "Zealot" party to answer a question
posed in a public forum about terrorism. As part of his response, he
noted that Jesus accepted a terrorist of the day into his inner circle.
Since this is manifestly false, it is already irresponsible as is; but
it is made worse by the fact that it would also mean Jesus harbored and
protected in his ministry a wanted criminal.

This is a perfect illustration of why Medearis' clumsy and breezy
preference for what he so arrogantly designates as "Jesus" over
doctrine, history, and all else is misguided. Unfortunately, inspired by
the fact that ONE (!) Muslim came up to him after the service and
remarked that Medearis didn't talk about theology or doctrine (which he
had "heard before") but rather "about Jesus in a way I've never heard
before," he concludes -- based on that thoroughly inadequate and
anecdotal sample -- that he did a better job than otherwise.

In reality, there can be no separation between Jesus and all the
rest of it. The identity of Jesus is intrinsic to, and inextricable
from, all those contexts. Medearis' naivete here is much like that of
the fundamentalist who professes to preach "just the Bible" and gets a
bent beak when you suggest that refinement may be had by understanding
the linguistic or social context of a passage. Medearis "Jesus" is an
emasculated and decontexualized message rooted in little more than
subjective personal experience to which the convert is expected to
become addicted under the pretense of it being some sort of "personal
relationship".

39 -- Particularly disturbing is Medearis' proclamation that it
is not "our job to explain everything," though in context he notes
particularly such matters as the Crusades and the Inquisition. This is
only partially right: It is not every Christian's job to explain every
single thing, but it is our job as disciples to at least know where to
go for answers when the honor of Christ is besmirched. In the end,
however, it is clear that the problem is not so much that Medearis shows
that it isn't our job, but that he is too disaffected to take the job
on in the first place. He writes further of a confrontational atheist
professor of his in college who railed against Christian evils and made
him feel uncomfortable, and then plaintively asks, "What exactly were we
supposed to say?"

Is Medearis serious? How about (depending on the argument),
"Professor, serious historians of the Inquisition like Henry Kamen tell
us..." Is this that hard to do? No, it is not. But Medearis describes
such things as this, or as the problem of original sin, as a "weight"
[41] he is relieved to have off his back, and that is despicable.

Again: This is not to say that everyone ought to be fully
informed on every conceivable issue, but the solution is not to ignore
the problems under the pretense of "just pointing to Jesus" as though
you were thereby relieved of the responsibility.

45 -- Even more disturbingly, Medearis asserts that the reason
why some Christians try to explain things is "because they're insecure
themselves." By that reckoning, apologists and scholars are the most
insecure Christians around, and that in turn is a gratuitous insult.
Perhaps that would explain why Medearis himself used to explain things,
but here again, all he would have done to eliminate that insecurity is
erect a fabricated "Jesus" (no different than one that might be
constructed by a Mormon, or a Hindu guru) that is amorphous and
indistinct enough that every possible objection passes through him.

48 -- Further indicating that this is so, here is how Medearis
summarizes his message: "We don't have to explain Him. All we have to do
is point with our fingers, like the blind man in the book of John, and
say, 'There is Jesus. All I know is that He touched me, and where I was
once blind, now I see.' "

Perhaps it ought to occur to Medearis that physical blindness
being cured is something which is quite plainly evidential in nature; it
can be tested, evaluated, and critiqued for effectiveness. On the other
hand, his attempt to apply this passage to something internal is
entirely misguided: While it can be tested for results, it is incapable
of being distinguished, internally, from an artificially bulletproof
delusion like the Mormon burning the bosom. The problem though is
encapsulated when he says, "we're wrong when we put our faith in our
reason." But that's not quite what we're to do. Rather, we're supposed
to back our faith (loyalty) with reasons to be loyal. If it were
otherwise, the missionary sermons in Acts would hardly appeal to
evidence such as the empty tomb.

He later asserts (76), "I point to [Jesus], and He does all the
heavy thinking. I don't have to convince anybody of anything." No, but
as a disciple, you do have a responsibility to honor Jesus by way of
defense when necessary. Again, of course, this may not be Medearis'
particular role in the Body, but for him to pretend that it is
universally not a responsibility is both irresponsible and contrary to
the example of Jesus himself and each of the apostolic-era teachers.

57 -- Medearis uses a quote from Donald Miller that also
encapsulates the problem: "How can I defend a term [Christianity] that
means ten different things to ten different people?" Well, actually --
you do this thing called "ask questions" and then you "get answers".
Again, raising your hands in despair isn't the responsible option.

67 -- One of Medearis' excuses for evasion of responsibility is
that it is God's job, not ours, to decide who is "in" and "out", and
that it is difficult for us to decide such things (75). But this too is
merely an evasion, especially since he later admits that such a line
does exist (69). Defining the boundaries of orthodoxy is in no sense the
same as deciding whose beliefs are within those boundaries. Once again,
Medearis thinks all we need to do is tell people to "follow Jesus," but
without the boundaries, which "Jesus" will Medearis be recommending?

The one who was the literalization of an initiation symbol in Gnostic mystery rites?

The one who was just some average Joe God picked out (adoptionism)?

The one who was magician and a homosexual?

The one who was one of many manifestations of God?

The one who is also the archangel Michael?

The one who is the Spirit brother of Lucifer?

The one who is a symbolic representative of the Christ Spirit?

The one that was a black man, or an Irish priest, or a cynic sage, or a pacifist, or an expression of the Gnostic redeemer myth?

While some of these are facetious, and I could offer many more, it
remains that Medearis is believing in his Jesus on the back of his
forebears like Athanasius who suffered greatly to be sure that he didn't
have to think that hard today.

71 -- Not too amazingly, Medearis shows the documented emergent
talent to speak out of both sides of his mouth, as he attempts to make
out Paul as a preacher in his mold based on a single passage in
Corinthians where Paul says he determined to know nothing but Jesus (1
Cor. 2). The fact that a significant portion of the rest of Paul's
letters amount to Paul firmly drawing lines between truth and untruth
escapes Medearis, as does the fact that the point of Paul’s statement is
not that he came preaching a highly simplistic message of the sort
Medearis is preaching, but is made as a contrast to the pneumatic public
speaking displays of his Corinthian opponents.

85 - A place that shows that Medearis misses the point is where
he asks, "Are we saved by our brains or our hearts?" I ask in reply: How
can your heart make a correct decision if your brain is not used?

88 -- I was not surprised to see a story raised similar to one I alluded to in an earlier critique of Spurgeon:
He tells an account of an elder divine who evaluated a younger man’s
sermon -- apparently on some text that did not have Jesus as a subject
-- as a poor one. The younger man asked if he had not done a competent
job of exegesis, and asked of various other faults; the elder man said
none of those were the problem. The problem was that the younger man
hadn’t brought his sermon back to the topic of Jesus.

Now while this may seem like admirable piety, in reality it is
badly misguided. In this I see the seeds of such things as modern Sunday
School material that strains mightily to make even obscure OT texts
relevant to a modern Christian life – when they aren’t. In turn, this
leads to a perception (rightly) that Christians force meanings into
texts that simply aren’t there.
Medearis quotes Spurgeon as saying to a junior preacher, "Son, until
you can find Christ in Ezekiel you will not share my pulpit again." My
reply to Spurgeon: "If you can find Christ in Ezekiel, you're straining
it far out of its intended context."

Our critique of the first half of this book is finished, and we
will conclude next time. For this half, I would close with a rather
disturbing comparison.

Years ago, I critiqued a cult leader named John Clark severely,
and catalogued the responses of his followers, one of which said the
following:

I knew that I probably didn't need to read [Holding]s article]
any further. However, I tried. Like you said, I, too, am willing to be
wrong and consider. Reading his website reminded me so much of where I
was in 1988 - - confusion!
. . . . I could not understand the big scholarly words,
Bro. John. But I understand the tender Voice of my Savior. My prayer for
the "scholars" is that they quit hiding behind the big words and just
humble themselves before Jesus. Then they could just rest and receive
from Jesus what they need.

It should disturb us greatly that Medearis' own professions are identical to that of this cult victim.